


Defrosting

by Zinnith



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Hypothermia, Male-Female Friendship, Trust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-26
Updated: 2012-04-26
Packaged: 2017-11-04 08:33:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/391856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zinnith/pseuds/Zinnith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carol knows a lot of things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Defrosting

**Author's Note:**

> Repost from the kinkmeme.
> 
> Trigger warning: Past abuse

Carol knows.

She knows what it’s like to feel like you don’t belong. She knows what it’s like to not be able to keep from flinching every time someone raises their hand. She knows what it’s like to always have to be watchful, to never be able to relax. She knows what it’s like to not be able to talk about it, to not _want_ to talk about it with people who won’t understand anyway.

Carol knows a lot about all those things and she’s certain that Daryl knows too. There are times she wishes she could just sit him down, tell him, “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours”, and get the story behind all those scars he tries so hard to keep hidden. She knows exactly how well that would go over. He’d run off, burrow away, keep licking his old wounds in private, and he probably wouldn’t talk to her again.

It’s different for her. Carol’s hurt and shame and weakness is already out in the open for everyone to see and it has been for years. She’s used to the pitying looks and the preconceived notions, as if the fading bruises on her skin told the story of her entire being. Daryl hides it better, hides it well enough to fool everyone but her, and she doesn’t blame him. To the rest of the world, Carol will always be the battered wife, the poor little victim who was too weak to walk away. That role wouldn’t suit Daryl, who wears his self-sufficiency like an armor, who could survive in the wilderness alone for weeks, but shies away if you try to show him kindness. 

Still. Carol knows, and after everything Daryl has done for her, everything he tried to do for Sophia, she’s more than happy to keep his secrets.

When they find the prison, things settle down. It takes a while to get the huge complex clean of walkers, but as winter comes closer, they are left with a reasonably safe place to spend the cold season. There is plenty of canned goods in the kitchen and actual beds to sleep in and fences and walls strong enough to protect them even from a herd of walkers. Lori’s belly grows more and more for every day. Rick demands that everyone learns how to handle a gun and sets up a watch schedule. Glenn and Maggie become more or less joined at the hip, never leaving each other’s side. Carol takes the time to properly mourn for her daughter. 

Daryl, well, Daryl hunts. There are times when it feels like he spends more time outside the prison walls than safely inside them, and Carol wonders if there is something she ought to know about, if there’s something about the place itself that gets to him, but she won’t ask and Daryl isn’t telling. Sometimes he brings Andrea, sometimes he brings T-Dog, and on a few occasions he brings Glenn, but mostly he goes out alone.

Carol doesn’t believe in providence, but afterwards she’ll still send up a silent thanks to a God she stopped believing in long ago that Daryl had company on this particular day.

It’s midwinter, cold enough to want to stay inside unless you have no other choice. Carol has just brought some hot coffee for T-Dog, who’s on watch duty in one of the guard towers. He’s bundled up in a thick winter coat and a blanket and still keeps grumbling about the cold while he warms his hands on the coffee mug. Carol stands there beside him, watching the vast, snow-covered fields that surround the prison. She’s shivering a bit, wrapped up in her own blanket, but the air is clear and it feels clean somehow.

“Don’t remember it being this cold before everything went to hell,” T-Dog complains, taking another sip of his coffee.

Carol nods absentmindedly, her eyes fixed on a murder of crows out there in the field, the birds dark against the untouched snow.

T-Dog continues, “All I’m saying is, if I liked the cold, I would’ve moved to Alaska or something.”

The crows take flight, all at once, forming a dark cloud of flapping wings. Something must’ve disturbed them. T-Dog puts the coffee down and raises his rifle, scanning the field, and Carol does the same, even though she doesn’t have a weapon.

Carol is the first one to see them, two people staggering out of the treeline at the far end of the field. They are too far away for Carol to see if they are walkers or humans and she grabs T-Dog’s elbow and points them out to him. He lines up the rifle, narrowing his eyes to peer through the scope, and when he gets the two approaching figures in his sight, he swears.

“Shit, that’s Andrea and Daryl.”

Something icy and sharp closes around Carol’s ribcage and squeezes it hard. Daryl took Andrea with him when he went out early this morning. They shouldn’t be back yet. Carol strains her eyes, trying to see more, but she can’t make out anything from this distance.

“What’s going on, are they hurt?”

T-Dog shakes his head. “I can’t see. C’mon, let’s go get the others.”

Carol follows him down the stairs, the pounding of her heart drowning out all other sound. Neither Daryl nor Andrea would ever come back here with a walker bite. It has to be something else, but _what_? Living here in safety for so many months has almost made Carol forget how very fragile life is these days, but now one horrifying scenario after the other is flashing through her mind. _Not Daryl. Please, please, not Daryl, I can’t lose him too._

Once they’ve raised the rest of the group, Daryl and Andrea have gotten to the middle of the field. They’re going slow, stumbling and leaning on each other. T-Dog and Rick open the gate and go out to meet them and Carol watches with her heart in her throat, clutching the blanket tighter around her shoulders.

Through the gate, she can see T-Dog and Rick sling Daryl between them to support him. At least Andrea seems to be moving under her own steam, carrying both her own rifle and Daryl’s crossbow. Carol knows she should be grateful for that, that it’s a _good_ thing, but her worry for Daryl overshadows everything else. It takes them far too long to reach the safety of the prison walls again, and when they finally slip through the gate, Carol is dizzy from holding her breath.

Daryl is covered in ice. That’s the first thing Carol notices, how there is ice everywhere. His hair, his clothes, his boots, even his eyelashes are frozen stiff.

Ed had a bunch of old survival manuals and when the blizzard hit back in -93, Carol sat down and read through them, just in case. There was a whole chapter on hypothermia and she remembers enough from it to know that this is bad. Daryl isn’t shivering and his skin is puffy and blueish wherever it’s visible. His eyes are open but Carol doubts he’s truly aware of anything around him. If it wasn’t for Rick and T-Dog, he wouldn’t be upright at all.

“What happened to you?” Carol asks, turning to Andrea. Her teeth are chattering and the sleeves of her jacket are also encased in ice, but she’s at least alert.

“We were trying to cross a stream and he went through the ice.” Andrea hands the weapons over to Glenn and gratefully accepts the proffered blanket. “I managed to get him up, and he was okay for a while, but he’s been getting worse and worse.”

“He needs to get warm, fast,” Rick says. “Where’s Herschel?” 

Daryl raises his head and blinks slowly, forcing numb lips to move. “Merle?” he asks, the word so slurred that it’s barely audible, and Carol’s insides clench together all over again.

* * *

Andrea is fine after she’s had a change of clothes and something hot to drink, and her fingers and toes have been checked for frostbite.

“Gonna be sore from lugging his heavy ass back here,” she mumbles over the rim of her tea mug, but there’s more concern than venom in her voice and Carol forgives her.

Daryl is an entirely different story. He’s uncharacteristically compliant when Rick and T-Dog haul him inside, into the cell block they’ve transformed into living quarters. It seems to be an effort for him to move his feet, but he’s not all the way out, and according to Herschel, that’s a good thing. He doesn’t make much sense though, keeps mumbling incoherently about his brother, and a few times about Sophia.

Daryl has picked out a cell at the far end of the block, a bit away from the others. It’s surprisingly neat and organized; clothes and equipment, weapons and spare crossbow bolts all in good order. They set Daryl down on the bottom bunk of the bed he’s using and start getting him out of his icy clothes. Glenn gets the boots off him, revealing hideously white feet, and Rick gets him out of his coat. Up until now, he’s been going along with everything they’ve done, not a word of protest out of his mouth, which is troubling in itself. The real problem starts when Herschel reaches for Daryl’s shirt, trying to unbutton it. The moment he gets close, Daryl seem to start a kind of unfocused, slow-motion panic, clumsily lashing out in what seems to be a desperate attempt to ward off his helpers.

Herschel ends up on his ass on the floor. Daryl slides off the bed, fails to get to his feet, and instead starts an unsteady crawl towards a corner, the only shelter in sight.

“Stop it, stop fighting us!” Rick shouts, following him and trying to grab his arm to drag him back to the bed. “Damn it, we’re trying to help you!”

Daryl tries to kick him and that only makes it all worse. Rick keeps raising his voice, trying to get a grip on him. Hershel loudly admonishes Rick to be careful and not jostle Daryl, and the rest of the group are standing around, watching the circus unfold while offering more or less helpful advice on how to handle the situation.

The small cell has quickly become very loud and crowded and Carol can see that this is not going to end well. She knows that Daryl wouldn’t be comfortable with so many people so close even if he were in his right mind at the moment, and all the shouting isn’t making anything better. She feels like going off somewhere to hide herself and she can only imagine what it has to be like for Daryl, muddled and frozen. Later, he will hate the fact that the rest of them saw him like this. Watching his delirious panic is breaking Carol’s heart, and she can’t take another second of it. 

“Stop it,” she says. She doesn’t raise her voice much, but somehow it still seems to carry over the general noise and confusion. “This isn’t helping. Why don’t you let me try?”

Rick turns around, uncertain, but he eventually steps aside and lets Carol past him. Daryl has made it all the way into the corner. He’s curled up with his face pressed against the wall, gone to ground like a wounded animal.

She kneels by his side and carefully reaches out to lay a hand on his shoulder. His entire body jerks at her touch, and she can feel how terribly cold he is. The ice on his clothes have melted and he’s soaking wet, but he’s still not shivering and Carol knows that’s bad news.

“Daryl? It’s Carol. You need to get out of these wet clothes, okay? Can you do that for me?”

The look he gives her is one of weary defeat, unwilling surrender, but he’s too exhausted to fight her. His eyelids keep sliding shut while she unbuttons his shirt and slides it off his shoulders, revealing all those old faded scars. Carol grabs a blanket to cover him up, hide his secrets from watching eyes. He’s heavy and unwieldy, but Carol got a lot of practice at undressing unconscious men when Ed came home drunk in the middle of the night.

By the time she has him undressed and wrapped in several more blankets, Daryl has fallen asleep, or passed out, Carol can’t really tell. His lips still don’t have any color to them and he’s frightfully pale, like the cold has sapped him of everything that makes him Daryl. He doesn’t wake up when Rick and T-Dog lift him onto the bed.

“Direct body heat is the fastest and safest way to warm him up,” Herschel says, just like Carol knew he would. As if on cue, the awkward glances start going around the room. No one seems to be prepared to meet anyone else’s eyes and Carol wants to shout at them all. _He keeps you fed and he keeps you safe so why are you hesitating?_

Then, T-Dog flexes his arm, the one where the cut and the infection left an ugly scar. He sighs and starts pulling off his sweater. Glenn and Rick aren’t far behind, reaching to unbutton their shirts, and Carol’s faith in the group is renewed. She’s glad they’re willing to help, she really is, but now that she thinks about it, it’s not hard to predict how Daryl will react to waking up undressed in bed with another man.

It’s not that Daryl has ever said much on the subject, but she heard the way Merle used to talk, can imagine that was the way their father used to talk, and she knows how the things you get beaten into your skin tend to stay there.

“I’ll do it,” she says, pulling her shirt over her head. The air is cool and her skin immediately breaks out in goosebumps. The men all avert their eyes as she shimmies out of her jeans as well. If it’s because her near-naked body makes them uncomfortable or if they’re just being polite, she doesn’t know. She keeps her underwear on and climbs into bed with Daryl, gets under the blankets and wraps her arms and legs around him. His ice cold skin against hers makes her yelp. Her body wants to pull away, to protect itself from the cold, but she forces herself to stay where she is.

“Are you sure?” Rick asks. 

Carol nods, trying to keep her own teeth from chattering. “Trust me, it’s best this way.”

She gets even closer to Daryl, puts his frozen fingers in her armpits to warm them up, and pulls his head down to rest against her shoulder. She can feel his too-slow heartbeat against hers, his faint breaths against her skin.

The rest of the group drop off, one by one, promising to come check in on them regularly and Carol is glad to finally be left alone. She doesn’t like being trapped with too many people in close quarters and she knows that Daryl doesn’t like it either.

“You have to stop scaring me like this,” she whispers in his ear, not knowing if he can hear her or not. She runs her hands carefully up and down his back, feeling raised bumps of scar tissue here and there, mapping the landmarks.

He’s so very cold. After a while, Lori turns up with a couple of hot water bottles and it helps, a little, but Daryl is still completely unresponsive, so deeply asleep that Carol is beginning to worry he might not wake up again.

Gradually, their shared space under the blankets begins to warm up. Carol actually dozes off for a moment and when she wakes up, Daryl is shivering violently against her. She turns her head and his eyes are open a slit, watching her, uncomprehending. Carol can see a hint of that panic again, like he would’ve bolted already if his body had been strong enough to carry him. She wraps her arms around him and holds on.

“It’s all right, you’re safe. We just have to get you warm again, okay?”

Daryl nods slowly, and seems to be relaxing just a tiny little bit while he keeps shivering apart in her arms. 

* * *

She’s not sure how long it takes before Daryl is finally warm and sleeping peacefully, breathing slow and steady. The rest of the group keeps checking in on them and she keeps sending them away, assuring them that she’ll come get them if she needs them.

It would be nice to stay like this for a while. It’s been a very long time since Carol had any close human contact and it feels like she could get used to sharing a bed with someone again. She’s not so sure Daryl could get used to it though, and she’s probably done all she can for him by now. She slips out from under the blankets and gets dressed again, but she can’t bring herself to leave the cell just yet. Instead, she sits down on the bed and arranges him so he’s using her thigh for a pillow. His hair is growing long, curling a bit around his ears, and she wonders if she should maybe offer to cut it for him, or if he’s intending to grow it out.

There’s a low knock from the open door. Carol looks up and finds Andrea standing there, like she’s hesitant to come in. Carol realizes what this must look like, what a very intimate moment it must be to witness, but she can’t bring herself to care. She’s not ashamed. Daryl might be, later, but with a little luck he’ll never find out this happened in the first place. 

“How is he?” Andrea asks. She steps into the room and sits down on the opposite bed, before handing over a couple of fresh hot water bottles. Carol switches them out, making sure that Daryl is comfortable and that his pulse is still steady. 

“He’ll be fine.” She raises her head and looks Andrea in the eye. “Tell the rest. No one says a word about this, ever. Not unless he brings it up first.”

Andrea nods. “I will.” She pauses, as if she’s unsure how to continue. “I think it’s nice, how you two look after each other,” she says finally. 

Carol looks down. The blankets have slipped a little and she pulls them up again, covering the scars. She can sense Andrea’s gaze linger there, where it has no business to be. Strictly speaking, it’s not really Carol’s business either, but Carol knows things that Andrea, with her college education and her guns and her fond memories of her father couldn’t possibly understand.

“What is it?” Carol asks, suddenly defensive.

Andrea twists a little in her seat. “Nothing. It’s just... he told me a story once, about getting lost in the woods and poison ivy. I laughed at him. God, I feel so bad about that. Nevermind.”

She stands up, shoves her hands into her pockets. Carol can’t help but wonder what happened between her and Daryl in the woods today. Whatever it was, it’s between the two of them.

“When he wakes up, tell him I’m glad he’s okay,” Andrea says before she turns and leaves.

Carol nods and runs her fingers through Daryl’s hair under the guise of checking his pulse again. “I will.”

She knows what it’s like to be damaged, to have memories of bruises that will never really fade away, and she knows that Daryl knows that too. But Andrea is right, it is nice that they look after each other.


End file.
